Well, fortunately everything was as we left it. But the weekend wasn't without incident...

I tried to spend 4-5 hours a day working on the grounds, as I've stated before our old caretaker was pretty much worthless, so I'm trying to get the place back to presentable.

Sunday I spent 2-3 hours on the Bobcat (yes it's fully operational again ) moving around debris and regrading some low areas. When I was finishing up, I smelled something burning, and though maybe I got leaves stuck somewhere on the engine and they ignited. I hopped out and checked the whole thing over and there was nothing burning. False alarm. After that my wife and I were watching a movie and I had to get up and check on the Bobcat, I just had this weird feeling that the Bobcat was going to catch fire and burn the garage down. The garage is across the property from our cabin, so my fear was that by the time I noticed we would have a big fire on our hands. After checking, everything was fine, and the Bobcat had cooled down.

About an hour after that, we heard a fire truck, and I don't think I have ever heard or seen an emergency vehicle in all my time going to this property. What was more alarming is that after we heard the sirens, they stopped right around our property. I was putting my shoes on and my wife yelled out, "I see smoke through the sky light". I ran as fast as I could to the garage, and on my way there I quickly noticed it was not our property that was on fire. Our next door neighbor's property was engulfed in flames. Once the fire got to his propane tank (250 gallons) there was a massive explosion and flames must have been 50 feet high. I ran back to our cabin to tell my lady to pack our stuff, as we may have to cut out, then went back to make sure the neighbors were ok.

Everyone was fine but their four car garage with an apartment on top was almost gone, along with other structures on the property. All in all it took about three hours and eight engines to put the fire out. Fortunately for us there is a creek that runs between our properties, and that seemed to provide a natural fire break. Nevertheless, I had two hoses running making sure our property was well saturated.

The neighbor thinks it was some rags he left in the garage after staining his deck. Scary stuff, and I spent most of the next day making sure our whole property had debris cleaned up, roofs cleared of leaves, decks clean, etc.

Here's a shot after they had been fighting the fire for about 45 minutes:

Here is the size of the embers that were falling on the opposite side of our property:

Got the call on Friday from the supplier I ordered our new door through that it's finally in and ready to be picked up. The plan is to head up on the 14th and grab the door on the way up. I took the 16th - 20th off of work to give myself two weekends and a full week. I want to make sure I take my time, especially when removing the existing shingles, I'm sure I'll crack a few but I'd like to reuse as many as possible. It's always tricky trying to plan your attack when you don't really know what you'll encounter once you start taking things apart. But I've learned to buy more than I think I'll need, extras can always be returned.

Hopefully I can setup my game camera again to do a time lapse, we'll see how it goes. Really looking forward to this project being in the rear view.

Headed up to the property in a few hours, the fires on the road up have been pretty brutal this past week, so hopefully I can get through. It's gut wrenching to see the amount of devestation these fires has caused, and they are only ~10% contained at this point.

I took all next week off of work so that I can take my time and hopefully mix in a little r&r.

Well something happened during my trip that I'm just not accustomed to... the dry rot wasn't as bad as I had thought . It had eaten through the sheathing, king and cripple studs, drywall, t&g pine, baseboard, three layers of sub-floor, and one floor joist. But I was able to fix everything fairly easily, started work Saturday morning and by Wednesday evening, everything was back together. Which worked out well for me because the rain came on Thursday.

I had to get creative when trimming out the inside, being the walls are close to 90 years old, they aren't as true as they could be. As a result the door jamb sits flush with the t&g on the interior at the top, but near the bottom the t&g is a bit proud of the jamb. To keep a consistent reveal on the jamb, I added a tampered notch to the backside of the molding. I know it's not the best approach, but I honestly don't think anyone will notice unless they're really looking for it. And you'd have to stand in the corner of the room to see it.

Here you can see I tried to keep the reveal as consistent as possible:

Here is the taper I had to cut out on the backside:

Tried to capture all of the colors that popped out when the rain started (not sure if I captured it or not, you might have to take my word that it was beautiful):

My pup wasn't a huge fan of me doing cleanup with the Bobcat, but she was a fan of the new door as a viewing spot:

Not sure if I mentioned previously, but that same friend of my dad's that hooked me up with the Grace ice and water shield has struck again. He owns a company that maintains cell sites in CA and OR and he is finally closing up shop and retiring. So that means a lot of the stuff he has in his warehouses are being sold off, or in this case given away...

It's a 65kW propane generator, he is also tossing in as many transfer switches I want as well as a 250 gallon propane tank. The generator was dropped at my buddy's warehouse yesterday, I told him it was on it's way but didn't tell him how big it was. He sent me that picture when it arrived asking if I was trying to power the cabin or the whole town.

Now I just need to figure out where I want to put it and get a pad poured.

The wife, pup, and I are headed to the cabin over Easter. Haven't been up there since New Years, hoping the place is still in one piece. One thing I've been considering doing is adding a electronic lock with a keypad to our community laundry room (has laundry and full bath), putting a coffee maker in there, and then giving the code to all of the local law enforcement and offering it to them as a place to take their breaks when they're in the area. I know the sheriff stops in every once in a while, in January I met our local game warden and I gave him the code for our gate and permission to enter our property. I figure the more people like that I can get stopping by the better.

Just a thought. The lan for next weekend is to take down the section of our deck that faces the river. This is the section that is in the worst shape and removing it will also give me access to where I will be redoing part of the foundation. The previous owner added an addition out over the old deck, and I've never ben a fan of the post and beam foundation they installed to support it. My plan is to suspend the addition with an i-beam or two, dig down a couple feet, pour a stem wall, and a slab for a nice little basement workshop. Only going to have seven feet of headroom, but for a little workshop, that's all I need. With the deck removed, that will allow me to get the Bobcat in there, I don't think I'll dig with the Bobcat, but it will make moving the dirt a lot easier.

Another good weekend at the cabin in the books, sadly as you all know all to well, there are always issues you don't expect. This trip that unknown issue was showing up to find we didn't have running water. We got in around 11:00pm, so I decided to dive into our water issues the next day. After a night's rest I went to work on the water system, and fortunately it was a relatively easy fix. I quickly found that our pump had given up the ghost, unfortunately when shutting down the system to remove the pump I broke the ball valve. In its defense it was probably 25+ years old. With essential items, like the water system, I have tried to ensure that we have spares on hand to minimize downtime. So I have a large supply of schedule 80 fittings, valves, and pipe as well as a backup pump.

Once that was taken care of I spent time cleaning the grounds and took advantage of a burn day to clean up debris. After the chores were done I got to work taking off the old deck, this took a couple days but I made sure all nails and screws were removed and the old wood was stacked in an orderly manner. Overall I was happy with the progress, kind of wish I had been able to take down the wall I built to support the deck back in 2013, but it won't be in the way when bringing the Bobcat in to haul the dirt that I dig out from under that room.

Pretty scary looking at just how bad the deck was, even though I knew it was really bad, it's really eye opening to see just how dangerous it was.

Woah, that's a lot of damage. Was it due to not using pressure treated lumber?

My deck at home (porch I guess) has a very heavy roof over it. Its probably 12'x16', 4' high roof in the center with asphalt shingles.The girder is completely rott, floor boards 1/2 rott, and 4 corner posts botton 1' are rotten. I need to try to secure the existing joists with a new girder and those foundation screws, then somehow replace each of the posts and hope the roof doesn't come down at the same time. Might just be easier to replace and start over but it'll cost be a few extra grand to do so. The previous owner who build this deck used standard lumber, no pressure treated, and not done very well. Sigh...

Woah, that's a lot of damage. Was it due to not using pressure treated lumber?

I would say it's a combination of things, not being PT lumber, gaps between boards being too tight, and no maintenance. I knew the deck was trashed when I bought the place, I have just been trying to limp it along for as long as I could. However it has gotten to the point where I know I'm only asking for someone to get hurt. So the deck will come off, and I will build a small deck to access the cabin to hold me over until I have the finances in place. My top priority is redoing the foundation under that room that the deck was attached to. It's a post and beam foundation, no disrespect to people that use them, but I just don't trust them.

With the deck out of my way I can get under there and temporarily support that room while I dig out for a continuous concrete stem wall. I will also take advantage of the deck being off to install a complete french drain around the cabin, something I've been wanting to do for a few years now.

My house had a small deck on it when we bought it. It was untreated and painted, and had started to rot. I figured I probably should do some repairs so I started poking around with a screwdriver testing how bad the rot was. Some boards were okay, with a few soft spots. Then I came to the brace that was supporting the cantilever portion and the screwdriver sunk clean through until the handle hit the board with a thunk. I think I looked like a cartoon character the way my eyes bugged out when I saw that. The deck came down that weekend.